


Candle Shop

by Beth Harker (Beth_Harker)



Category: Newsies (1992)
Genre: M/M, Modern AU, Take Your Fandom to Work Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-30
Updated: 2015-12-30
Packaged: 2019-09-30 05:01:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17217488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beth_Harker/pseuds/Beth%20Harker
Summary: Mush works in a candle shop.





	Candle Shop

It was ten o'clock, and Mush’s night to close and restock. That meant crawling under the table where the votives were kept, and rummaging around until he was waist deep in sweet scented candles with names like “Clean Linen” and “Coconut Bay”. On the display the candles were neatly arranged by color, but restocking was chaos, and no attempts at organizing it lasted for long.

Closing was nice, because Mush could turn off the Cole Porter CD that played all day, and listen to whatever he wanted on the radio. He also got to ferret out and keep any broken merchandise he happened to find, which tonight meant that he got two long purple taper candles with cracks running through them, and a dragon shaped candle that had lost a wing.

It was eleven when Blink started banging on the door of the shop. Mush unlocked it for him. “Wanna help me clean up while I close out the drawer?” he asked. He’d get home quicker that way. He didn’t ask why Blink was there. Blink just showed up sometimes.

“Hey, can I stay at your place tonight?” Blink whispered, as he took the broom. It always took Blink a few minutes to realize that Mush’s boss (who Mush had never seen get angry about anything) wasn’t going to jump out of nowhere and get angry that Mush had let somebody in.

“Yeah. Hey Kid, you remember that girl, Anya? She started sleeping in the back room here when her folks kicked her out.”

Blink rolled his eyes, but there wasn’t any real malice behind it; he was just tired. “You saying I should try and hide out in the candle store?”

“Nah, ‘cause you got me to hide out with. Just thinking is all.”

Mush had to be quiet for a while after that, because closing out the drawer involved math, and he couldn’t do math and talk at the same time. As things were, he needed to count the money in the drawer three times before he got it to balance right. His mind kept wandering.

He finished up the drawer, and blew out the oil lamps in the display alcove. Blink put the broom away. Blink didn’t work at the shop, but he hung out enough to know his way around.

Blink drove them home, so Mush stowed his bike away in the back room. He’d just have to make sure he got into work first in the morning, so nobody but him would see the bicycle there. Blink blasted his car radio, and smoked three cigarettes on the way home, while Mush told him about some of the more interesting people he’d sold things to that day.

It was quiet at Mush’s house; when he’d first started working, his mom had stayed up every night to make sure he got home okay, but now he was nineteen and she worried less. Mush gestured for Blink to be quiet, grabbed some cereal and milk from the kitchen, and brought it up to his room for the two of them.

“You smell like incense,” Blink pointed out, as they sat on Mush’s floor and ate.

“I don’t smell it anymore.”

“Yeah, well I could stand all the way across the room and still smell it.”

Mush didn’t point out that Blink was sitting with his shoulder brushing up against his own, and that that was the very opposite of standing across the room. He got his point. There were other signs of Mush’s workday on his body – worn spots on the knees of just about every pair of pants he owned from crawling around on the scratchy wooden floor whenever he wanted to restock something, a certain dustiness that always clung to him from the candle store building, which was over a hundred years old. There was tiredness too, because his mom was working two jobs and making minimum wage, and Mush was thinking that maybe he’d have to find a second one himself, because the candle store was really nice, but it just didn’t pay well, even if it was the only place he’d ever worked that would give him a solid forty hours without trying to screw him over.

“I’m on the clock again in eight hours,” Mush said, trying not to wonder how he’d ever manage with a second job. “I’m not gonna bother to try and wash the smell off.” He gulped down the last of the milk from his bowl, and Blink did the same.

“I ain’t complaining.”

“It doesn’t come off even when I try. It gets down into your skin, I guess.”

“Beats working at a fried fish joint,” Blink pointed out. Skittery had down that for a while, and they guys still teased him that they could smell oily fish on some of his clothes.

“You wouldn’t mind if I did, huh Kid?”

“You could work on a garbage truck and I wouldn’t mind.”

That made Mush smile. He loved it when Blink said things like that, especially on nights like this, when he was tired from doing things all day, and Blink was over because he was in trouble, and they were both pretending that that wasn’t the case. They could stay up and talk together half the night, and then reset things in the morning, with work and family and dreams of a better life somewhere in between.


End file.
